


A Nice Little Sideline

by Icon_UK



Category: New Mutants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 14:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15245382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icon_UK/pseuds/Icon_UK
Summary: Not sure if this is headcanon or fanfic, but what the heck....





	A Nice Little Sideline

Shortly after arriving at Xaviers, and discovering the extent to which he really COULD make the Danger Room do pretty much anything, Doug "Cypher" Ramsey started a nice little sideline in customised Danger Room scenarios. Not for money, but for occasional good will gesture, surprise present or as a swap for doing chores, it came in very handy, and some of it counted towards his final exams. His first clients were, of course, his team-mates.  
  
Sam - Sam had a surprisingly long list of environments from his favourite sci-fi novels, all neatly listed and ranked in order of desirability. Despite the fact he’d actually been to a Dyson Sphere, his favourite remained a recreation of Larry Niven’s Ringworld… Doug even threw in some Kzin and a Pierson’s Puppeteer to accompany Sam on his explorations.

Dani - Didn’t take Doug up on his offer for a long time, but after she bonded with Brightwind, discovered that even a faux Asgardian environment made Brightwind happier, so Doug was able to go wild designing some Asgardian architecture castles and plains.

Roberto - Though Doug turned down a few semi-harem scenario requests, there was more than one World Cup Final which had R DaCosta as a Brazilian striker. In one case, all the other players were allowed to mimic Sunspot powers (and the ball was indestructible), so that Berto could cut loose with his powers with a clear conscience. 

As a planned Christmas present from the team, Doug designed an entire “Magnum PI” role play game specifically for Berto, so that everyone in the scenario treated him as they would Thomas Magnum himself. Due to Doug dying just before that Christmas, the rest of the team never gave it to him (planning on doing so at a less emotional time) and the program was lost the next the Mansion was trashed. it was only recently, upon his return, that Doug was able to fish a copy out of his personal archive and present it to Berto, who STILL loved it.

Xian - Never actually asked for anything, but Doug took that as a challenge, and eventually, after a great deal of research and making sure he'd got all the details accurate, presented her with a Vietnamese village, just a small, peaceful place that had never known the war, but one where everyone spoke Vietnamese and Xian could relax whenever she wanted. When he presented it to her, it was the one and only time that Xian ever hugged him.

Amara - Having heard so much about it in Nova Roma texts, Amara was particularly keen to see what Ancient Rome would have looked like. It’s true that Doug may have taken a few liberties, there was a LOT of Ben Hur in it, and throwing in simulacra of Asterix and Obelix fighting Ceasar’s Legions might have been a step too far, but Amara took it in good part (and joined in).

Illyana - As a teleporter who had her own (admittely hellish) dimension that responded to her moods, Illyana never felt the need to indulge in Danger Room fantasy worlds. She did apparently have one idea for a scenario which involved the members of three different bands, but when she whispered the details to Doug he turned an interesting colour and explained that if he wasn’t going to program Berto’s harem fantasies there was no way he was going to program Illyana’s, especially as he was pretty sure some of her ideas was both illegal AND physically impossible.

Rahne - Never took Doug up on his offer, but eventually asked that he show her how to use the Danger Room systems herself. It wasn’t until much later that he realised that she’d just wanted to spend time with him. It was some time after that, that she used what he had taught her to replay his death over and over again, trying to find a means of saving him.

Warlock - Since he was a shapeshifter and someone to whom the entire planet Earth was already a weird fantasy adventure playground, Doug was really stumped by what to create for Warlock; there seemed to be nothing that he could possibly create for his selffriend that he couldn’t already experience, create or be. 

Though he could have done it, recreating the Technarch homeworld was not something that Warlock would have enjoyed either, given his memories of the place being all about Magus trying to kill him from the moment of his birth.

That changed after their Douglock fusion, and Doug first saw the world through Warlock’s perceptions. He spent days prgramming and when he finally unveiled it… it appeared to be a dark, three metre diameter sphere, hanging motionelss in mid air, and that was it.

The team were baffled, but Warlock, on the other hand, was in raptures. His attempts to explain the sheer beauty, and complexity, and simplicity, and wonder of it, were sort of confusing to everyone. Doug explanation that it was "a four-dimensional fractal, mostly using wavelengths of light beyond human visual perception, and replicating various vibrational states of lifeglow", didn’t really help, but it seemed to make Warlock happy, and it was his present after all.

Doug considered this last to be his only real contribution to “art”, and the fact that only his selfsoulfriend really understood it, made it special for them both.


End file.
